[BRIEF NOTE] The End of the Call Centre Dream

[rfmcdonald]

This morning on CBC Radio One's The Current, Anna-Maria Tremonti interviewed Jacques Poitras, a journalist for CBC New Brunswick whose series "India Calling" examined the threat posed by Indian competition to New Brunswick. Under then-Premier Frank McKenna in the 1990s, New Brunswick sought to attract call centres, citing a low-wage educated workforce and good telecommunications as reasons for North American companies to invest. The call centres, in McKenna's vision, would serve to catalyze an information sector into existence in New Brunswick, the call centres serving to attract software designers and computer manufacturers. At this point, India appeared with a much cheaper work force with significantly higher educational levels--according to Poitras, many of the workers have post-graduate degrees--and much better terms of business. Poitras convincingly argued that there simply isn't any competition between India and New Brunswick, and that New Brunswick's only hope is that Indian companies might want to establish front offices in New Brunswick. Even French-language call centres risk being undermined by competition from Francophone Senegal.

This whole episode is Atlantic Canadian economic history, iteration x. Will things ever change?